Next-Generation Space Telescope Getting Modeled at SXSW

The full-scale model of the Webb Space Telescope is outside the Long Center for SXSW Interactive.

courtesy NASA

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First it was a music festival, then a film festival, then an interactive festival. Since then, South by Southwest has added education, the environment and venture capital to its repertoire. Could SXSW Space be far off?

You might see the first step on Friday. NASA is bringing its next-generation space telescope to the Long Center, or at least a full-size model of it. The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in 2018; it’s the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. KUT’s Matt Largey spoke with Steve Finkelstein, an astronomer at UT, about the faraway things Webb can see that Hubble can’t, because of the Doppler effect.

When things move away from you, the waves get stretched, and that makes them look redder. And so essentially all galaxies are moving away from us because the universe is expanding. And the more farther away a galaxy is, the faster it’s moving away from us, and the more shifted its light gets; we actually call this shift a red shift, because everything is moving away so it gets redder. You kind of get to the point Hubble can only see so far before all of the visible light that you normally see in your eye gets completely red-shifted out of Hubble’s range.

Every year, the South By Southwest music, film and interactive festival gets larger, and navigating the blur of panels, parties and shows gets more daunting. The girth of it all is enough to keep many SXSW old-timers away from Austin this year.